Arrangement and Description of Archival Documents

Co-Requisite: None

Goal: To teach students the fundamentals of arranging and describing archival documents.

Objectives:

1. To familiarize students with aggregations of archival documents and their interrelationships.
2. To examine the principles underlying the arrangement of archival documents and their historical evolution.
3. To develop the intellectual framework for the systematic identification and critical evaluation of an archival fonds and its parts.
4. To understand the principles and methods of description of archival materials according to standards adopted by the archival community.
5. To understand the principles and methods of establishing name access points to archival descriptions according to standards adopted by the archival community.

Content:

1. The concepts of fonds, series, file, and item.
2. Principles of provenance, respect des fonds and respect for original order.
3. The analysis of the external and internal structure of a fonds.
4. Types of finding aids: guides, inventories, and other descriptive lists.
5. Principles and assumptions underlying the development of rules for archival description.
6. Application of the Bureau of Canadian Archivists' Rules for Archival Description to description at the fonds, series, file, and item level.
7. Selection of name access points to archival descriptions according to Part II of Rules for Archival Description.